New Vid Card Suggestions for older system

Elizabeth_BJul 10, 2012, 2:32 AM

Hello,I currently have a SAPPHIRE TOXIC Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Cardin a gigabyte ep45-up3d mobo with a Core 2 Quad Q9550 We want to upgrade our Graphics card. What would be compatible with this mobo? We are mainly playing games like Mass Effect 2 on Steam. Just can't afford to do a total system upgrade right now.

Sorry, forgot to include the PSU and case: I have a CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-620HX 620W ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready PSU and a Cooler Master Storm Sniper case. I am running Win 7 64 bit home premium and have 8GB of G.Skill PI Black DDR2 800 RAM. Any other upgrade advice would be appreciated! My budget is about $200-$250 at the most for the Graphic card.

That is exactly the only I was thinking about. Read good things about this card as being a great "bang for the buck" solution. Really would like the Sapphire version but Newegg is currently out of stock.

If I did decide to increase the budget and go with the 7870, I noticed the HD 7870 requires two 6-pin PCI-Express power cables for operation and the HD 7850 requires only 1. Will my set up support the HD 7870 requirements? I will need to go hunting for the cables the PSU came with, right? It has been awhile since we built this machine. I read the tech power up reviews of both of the cards but not specific brands.

If I did decide to increase the budget and go with the 7870, I noticed the HD 7870 requires two 6-pin PCI-Express power cables for operation and the HD 7850 requires only 1. Will my set up support the HD 7870 requirements? I will need to go hunting for the cables the PSU came with, right? It has been awhile since we built this machine. I read the tech power up reviews of both of the cards but not specific brands.

That power supply is more than sufficient to handle a single Radeon HD 7870 card.

Yes, you'll need to hunt down that second modular 6-pin PCIe power cable.

Not to a significant extent if you put on a decent OC, not that he won't get better fps with say an 4ghz 2500k but the performance will scale accordingly if you offload the gpu still (by lowering res or other settings) even with cpu he has now.

Meaning that if the 7850 is on average say 80% faster than a 4870 he will still get the 80% improvement in performance, but offcourse it'll still be slower than a high-clocked quadcore Sandy or Ivy Bridge.

depending on how you measure "performance"................ any new card from a 6950 on up would be more than his processor could push to it's max........ but will be a significant upgrade over the 4870.

Could someone help me understand this a little better? Since I cannot afford to upgrade the whole build and I am stuck with the current mobo/cpu/ddr2 set up; would it be a waste of $$ to go as high as the 7850 or even the 7870? Is there a "fairly" good upgrade that will not be overkill? Forgot to mention: we do want to play Skyrim soon as tis is part of why we want to upgrade the card. Don't know if that makes any difference as to the recommendations and an Nvidia solution or an ATI solution.

6950 on up........... get a card with 2gigs of vram. your processor will hold back whatever you buy but that's okay. you don't really want to go less. been there........ so yes, either card would be fine.

Could someone help me understand this a little better? Since I cannot afford to upgrade the whole build and I am stuck with the current mobo/cpu/ddr2 set up; would it be a waste of $$ to go as high as the 7850 or even the 7870? Is there a "fairly" good upgrade that will not be overkill? Forgot to mention: we do want to play Skyrim soon as tis is part of why we want to upgrade the card. Don't know if that makes any difference as to the recommendations and an Nvidia solution or an ATI solution.

Your current system is already very close to the recommended system requirements. Your current graphics card is just one model below the Radeon HD 4890. Your CPU is already better than the recommended CPU.

Try it and see if it works for you. If it doesn't then get the new graphics card.

If you want to get the graphics card anyway then get the Radeon HD 7850.